Livable wage

PC123 · Dec 25, 2020

Hi. I live in this hell hole known as Melbourne... Im assuming your in Perth. Howz life over there?
In the 25 years iv been working ive seen the median house price go from under 200K to over 800K.
However i have seen no changes to peoples wages.

This graph illustrates exactly what i was talking about.

Magenta · Dec 25, 2020

iamsoandso said:

In regards to your last sentence: I think maybe it is more that people are turning to tiny and mobile homes (which have been a go-to for many years, with the people who live in the latter being called such things as "trailer trash") as a viable option due to the outrageous cost of real estate, which has sky-rocketed in recent years. Many people who can afford homes now tear down the existing domicile and reconstruct to the max of city bylaws limitations. In perhaps the last twenty years where I live, housing costs have multiplied by at least ten. A two bedroom condo in a three story house will set you back a million dollars. Mind you, that is in a nice area of town. A house in the same area may be 3-5 million. For rentals (which are scarce), in comparison, because of rent controls, my rent has not quite doubled in thirty years, but if I were to move, my new rental rate would be 50% more than it is currently, and the rent on my suite would also be raised by at least that much. It's nuts

DWR · Dec 25, 2020

PC123 said:

This thread is about a livable wage.
Owning a home is not necessary. Sure we all would like to, but not necessary.
If people would stop paying these ridiculous home prices, they would be much lower.
Most people buy more house than they really need.

No doubt everything is much more costly where you live than where I live.
It is possible to find a 3 bedroom, 1500 sq. ft. home in my area for less than $150,000.
A 2 bedroom 1000 sq. ft. apartment can be rented for less than $600 a month.

$11 per hour at 40 hours a week = $440, about $415 after taxes. That is over $1600 per month.
A single person can live on on $1600 a month in my area. Not many extras, but a livable wage.
A couple would be making $3200 a month and could have money for extras.

I left California in 1972 and moved to NW Arkansas just because of the different lifestyles.
Got away from unions that allowed me to make MORE money without worrying about strikes and work stoppages that cost me thousands of dollars in lost wages every year.
The cost of living was also about 50% lower.
Best move I every made.

iamsoandso · Dec 25, 2020

Magenta said:

Yep money is sure loosing it's value while what you can buy with it is getting really bad. This is a 45,000.00 "Jayco" at about 1 minute notice it is made of "cardboard" instead of wood

he should have used relief cuts in the plywood he is redoing it with but it worked so hey. I noticed he doesn't use a lot of fowl language in his video is why I chose his but it is mind boggling what some of these things are made of to cut cost nowadays.

DWR · Dec 25, 2020

PC123 said:

You can only sell a house for what people are willing to pay.
When people start saying NO, the price will come down.

Genipher · Dec 25, 2020

DWR said:

This thread is about a livable wage.
Owning a home is not necessary. Sure we all would like to, but not necessary.
If people would stop paying these ridiculous home prices, they would be much lower.
Most people buy more house than they really need.

No doubt everything is much more costly where you live than where I live.
It is possible to find a 3 bedroom, 1500 sq. ft. home in my area for less than $150,000.
A 2 bedroom 1000 sq. ft. apartment can be rented for less than $600 a month.

$11 per hour at 40 hours a week = $440, about $415 after taxes. That is over $1600 per month.
A single person can live on on $1600 a month in my area. Not many extras, but a livable wage.
A couple would be making $3200 a month and could have money for extras.

I left California in 1972 and moved to NW Arkansas just because of the different lifestyles.
Got away from unions that allowed me to make MORE money without worrying about strikes and work stoppages that cost me thousands of dollars in lost wages every year.
The cost of living was also about 50% lower.
Best move I every made.

Again, depends on the area and number of people in your family.
We bought a house because a mortgage, in our area, is waaaay cheaper than renting.

Genipher · Dec 25, 2020

Magenta said:

When I was growing up, things like milk and bread were home delivered regularly. We would go through maybe 20 loaves of bread a week, mostly white, because only the adults would eat the whole wheat. My mother never learned to drive, but she always did the grocery shopping because she was the one who knew what was needed, and the driver, whoever it was, would be the helper. My dad, aside from working full time factory swing shifts, was also an entrepreneur: we would go to weekend farmer's markets and sell produce, mostly apples and potatoes and other seasonal produce as well, especially peaches in the summer, so we always had produce for the table from that. One of my sisters would complain that we always got the seconds, but she was almost on a mission always to discover whether we were eating real butter, or margarine, real orange juice, or Tang, and/or real milk, or powdered skim milk. My mother also pickled and jammed and canned all sorts of things (we had a real earthen-floored fruit cellar in the basement), and we loved helping out with the grinding of the fruit and boiling/sterilization of jars etc. We baked almost all our own goodies: pies, cakes, and cookies, and coming home to large bowls of cinnamon bun dough rising on the heating vents was always a treat. I was an expert fudge maker

As a teen, I would come home from working at the farmer's market after school and make fudge every Friday night. None of us eleven kids know how our mother did it. LOL. Only one of my siblings who had children had more than two (she had four) and her house was a mad house all the time while they were growing up, ha.

Have you thought of writing a book about your experiences growing up? There are many folks (myself included!) who would be interested in learning more about those simpler times.

tourist · Dec 25, 2020

Genipher said:

Same here.

PC123 · Dec 25, 2020

DWR said:

You can sell property for what people are willing to pay for it, yes. And some people are rich, its these people, usually the baby boomers, who continue to buy all the property at inflated prices, leaving the young house hunter with an impossible task and having to resort to paying rent...

There are also private companies and international investors which are allowed to waltz in and buy what they like...
There used to be laws on these entities doing this to provide a fairer market... But does the government make more tax if a property sells for less... Off course not, so they opened up the laws to allow the inflation of the property market in order to win more money from tax

DWR · Dec 25, 2020

Genipher said:

I agree. Sometimes buying is the best option but not always.
I did say a single person, not a family.
I will also say this---
$11 is the minimum wage. If a person can not advance and make more, than maybe that is all that person is worth.

But why do people continue to live where it is so expensive and so difficult to make it?
I saw it coming in California in 1972 and found a way to leave.

tourist · Dec 25, 2020

DWR said:

I agree. Sometimes buying is the best option but not always.
I did say a single person, not a family.
I will also say this---
$11 is the minimum wage. If a person can not advance and make more, than maybe that is all that person is worth.

But why do people continue to live where it is so expensive and so difficult to make it?
I saw it coming in California in 1972 and found a way to leave.

I left Michigan in 1985 for the same reason.

iamsoandso · Dec 25, 2020

Not that I'm against people having a raise in pay but if they raise the MW to 15.00 an hour then a soda will go up to 2.50 a can,bread will be 5.00 a loaf and milk will be 7.00 a gallon. When I was young I worked for .75(cents/1950's) an hour but,,, Gas was about .25 a gallon,.27 was really expensive gas,lol... A new car was about 2,000.00 https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1996-06-16-9606160132-story.html A loaf of bread was about .10 a loaf for name brand https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1996-06-16-9606160132-story.html and most house notes were around 50.00 a month. https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1996-06-16-9606160132-story.html Anyway the more wages go up the more the stuff goes up and it's quality goes down so the issue is "how much you can buy with a dollar".

iamsoandso · Dec 25, 2020

https://tasks.illustrativemathematics.org/content-standards/tasks/1330 https://archive.curbed.com/2018/4/10/17219786/buying-a-house-mortgage-government-gi-bill here's the other two links I gave the one 3 times instead of the others,lol

Magenta · Dec 25, 2020

DWR said:

I rarely venture into the interior areas of most grocery stores where all that "crap" is LOL. I mostly stick to the outside edges where the fresh produce, baked goods, dairy and deli delights are

Of course I do have to venture into the aisles for certain things, for instance, stevia is now shelved with sugar and baking needs, and because I am at home since being laid off due to covid, I make my own coffee, and like to mix evaporated skim milk with my cashew milk for creamer

And chips! Oh boy, the ingredients' list should be enough to put most people off

But no, do they even read labels? I moved away from home and began supporting myself as an eighteen year old, and have been reading labels for over forty five years now

The chips I might buy have perhaps three ingredients in them: organic corn, oil, and salt. Although I have taken a liking to blue corn chips with flax seeds, so that is four ingredients

Genipher · Dec 25, 2020

Magenta said:

I rarely venture into the interior areas of most grocery stores where all that "crap" is LOL. I mostly stick to the outside edges where the fresh produce, baked goods, dairy and deli delights are

Of course I do have to venture into the aisles for certain things, for instance, stevia is now shelved with sugar and baking needs, and because I am at home since being laid off due to covid, I make my own coffee, and like to mix evaporated skim milk with my cashew milk for creamer

And chips! Oh boy, the ingredients' list should be enough to put most people off

But no, do they even read labels? I moved away from home and began supporting myself as an eighteen year old, and have been reading labels for over forty five years now

The chips I might buy have perhaps three ingredients in them: organic corn, oil, and salt. Although I have taken a liking to blue corn chips with flax seeds, so that is four ingredients

Have you heard of the "Simply" brand of chips? Simply Doritos, Simply Cheetos, etc.
We don't get chips much anymore but when we do those are the kinds we get. You could actually read and understand the ingredients.

Genipher · Dec 25, 2020

DWR said:

I think we are agreeing on a lot. if a person wants a higher wage they need to find a better job.

I'm on the Oregon coast. If my kid got an $11 an hour job and moved out...a 1 bed rental around here would cost them anywhere from $800 to $1,000 a month. They could potentially make it on their own, especially if they didn't have to pay for water or electric.

we haven't moved because there's not many jobs that are better than the one my husband has. 🤷

oldethennew · Dec 25, 2020

Magenta said:

It was a different time, wasn't it? Honey and maple syrup were market staples also; my dad would travel a fair distance to get the best price for resale, driving from Ontario into Quebec for syrup, and to the Niagara escarpment for peaches, and even compete at the markets with the farmers he bought from

I escaped the major weekly household women's work on Saturdays by volunteering (when I was eight) to work with my dad and three brothers without even knowing what it was they did once they departed the house Saturday morning

It was an authentic farmer's market, that one, with an old time yodeling auctioneer auctioning livestock off the barn and restaurant. One of the barns was a flea market, and it was very exciting for me as a youngster to see the changes happening in the public sphere in the mid to late late sixties. Our Friday market was in a shopping mall parking lot. My dad also made barrels and barrels of apple cider in the fall to sell at the fall fairs we would go to; the fairs were a lot of fun and quite an adventure for the child I was

He would collect and sterilize old liquor bottles, and sell cider by the 40 ounce bottle. It was 35 cents; a cup of apple cider was five cents, same price as a single apple in those days. I do not know what a barrel of cider sold for

The cider would ferment after a few days also

We always ate all our meals together. When my dad was working nights, our noon meal was a full-on dinner, and the evening meal a lighter supper. If he was home for the evening meal, our noon meal was a light lunch, and the evening meal a full-on dinner. We went to a near-by school and would walk home at noon, and then back to school for the rest of the afternoon, from kindergarten through high school. We would often visit relatives on a Sunday afternoon after church, and stay for dinner. Can you imagine having a dozen people showing up for dinner? It was not always pre-planned/announced, either, and people would likewise drop in on us on a Sunday afternoon and stay for dinner. My mother would just pull an extra roast out of the deep freeze and cook more veggies and potatoes

And there were always extra pies in the freezer, also. Apple pie is still my fave

My parents both grew up on farms, and my dad especially was what is known as a subsistence farmer, which means they grew food to feed themselves, plus they fished and hunted game to supplement their diet, or they would have starved. My father plowed the fields walking behind an animal (equine or bovine I do not know for sure), because they were too poor to afford a tractor, even though my dad worked a tractor in a neighbor's fields. I posted some of this before in other threads...

I have been talking quite a bit of late to my twin brother, who has done extensive research into our family tree, giving him lots of stories to share aside from what he remembers. According to him, one time we had over twenty people drop in for Sunday dinner. That would have been multiple families, since none of our relatives' families rivaled ours' in size LOL. We yearly hosted about thirty or so people for Christmas dinner, so more than forty people for a sit-down meal, and possibly also at Thanksgiving and Easter. Huge turkey with all the fixings, mashed, gravy, cranberry sauce, multiple veggie dishes, and the to-die-for dressing, plus multiple home made pie choices and cakes for dessert. For a time we regularly drove about an hour every Sunday afternoon to visit my mother's only sister and her family, who lived on a rural farm north of us. My mother had three brothers as well, and my dad was from a family of twelve children, so we had lots of aunts and uncles and cousins

I cannot imagine what feeding such numbers would cost these days.

I watched a bit of the first video you posted

You do have to be very organized to pull off that kind of meal planning, and also any canning or jamming and pickling and such, since there is a small window of time to can and jam for most fruits. With eight children you could have a grand time doing something like that as a group project. My siblings and I agree that my mother ruled the roost with an iron fist LOL. She gave up working as a teacher in a one room school house when she married, and devoted her life to raising her family. Once all the kids were grown and out of the house, she volunteered at schools, tutoring students, and libraries. And always had someone to drive her to go shopping

===========================================
Thanks for sharing such an amazing family history-story-ies - lots of commonalities going on with hub and his family -
if jealously was in my dna, then I would be so much so, but alas it is for sure not a part of my make-up -
but I am so happy for all of the earthy-plain-ole happenings that you have shared, just can't imagine the love and security
that you had while growing up, it's so very precious and has made you the remarkable person that you are and have shared
with all of us on this site...'hugs'

oldethennew · Dec 25, 2020

tourist said:

While living in Maine I made various fudges for a hobby. My next hobby that I will start at the beginning of the new year is to learn how to bake various types of bread from scratch. Might get back into the fudge thing too.

For me a fudge has to have a very firm texture and not mushy. Gonna get a copper kettle and a marble slab and start doing it right. Oh, must get a premium candy thermometer too although at one point I was relying on the cold water test. So, my New Year resolution will be to learn to bake bread and hone my confectionary skills. Yeah, another resolution would be to quit smoking too. Maybe I can make nicotine laced brownies. Years ago I developed a chewy cocoa brownie recipe that got rave reviews but can't quite remember it now. It had something to do with the addition of marshmallows.

I'm still on target with my French Toast recipe though. Darlene loves it. I used to make it every Saturday morning for my daughter Jackie as she was growing up. She now makes it the same way that I did for her 5 children and husband.

Since we are still staying at the motel our Christmas dinner will be KFC. We will be moving into our new home early next week. Darlene is planning on either baking a turkey or a ham. She is really into the holidays, so much more that I obviously am.

Merry Christmas to you and your daughter and pray that the New Year brings God's joy and contentment to your life. Looking outside it looks like its going to be a white hard candy Christmas here where we are.

==============================
we are both 'over the moon' because of your 'statement' of your resolution to 'quit-smoking' -
we are praying for you to commit and make it so, with ALL of our hearts!!!(hugs to you both)!!!

Magenta · Dec 25, 2020

Genipher said:

Simply? No, I do not think so. I tend to go for organic and non-GMO, and mostly corn chips, not potato or any of those puffy things

Some of the flavors of chips, my goodness, LOL, dill pickle? Many stores have a big long aisle, all chips and soda. I never really cared for pop, either, and when I did drink it, preferred those which did not have caffeine in them, which I didn't even know when I was really young. (Never a Coke or Pepsi fan

) I don't mind a bit of lime with my corn chips, but even that after a while gets to be too much

I like them fairly plain and then I load them up with salsa and sometimes guacamole also

I can make a meal of chips and salsa

I do like simple ingredients' lists, which are understandable, and pronounceable. It somehow feels/seems safer

Magenta · Dec 25, 2020

oldethennew said:

===========================================
Thanks for sharing such an amazing family history-story-ies - lots of commonalities going on with hub and his family -
if jealously was in my dna, then I would be so much so, but alas it is for sure not a part of my make-up -
but I am so happy for all of the earthy-plain-ole happenings that you have shared, just can't imagine the love and security
that you had while growing up, it's so very precious and has made you the remarkable person that you are and have shared
with all of us on this site...'hugs'

Thank you, that is really very sweet of you to say, so touching

Merry Christmas!!! {{{hugs}}}

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